Life as we know it could end in ten years if we don’t start taking drastic action. This is the message to come out of a new report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), their first look at antibiotic resistance around the world. The report finds that antibiotic resistant superbugs are present in every region of the world and that many countries lack even the basic systems to track and monitor them. It also highlights that microbes responsible for gonorrhoea, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, bloodstream infections, infections in newborns and intensive-care unit patients are now resistant to the most effective antibiotics used to kill them.
“Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill,” says Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Health Security.
Latest estimates put the number of potential antibiotic resistance genes that exist at more than 20,000. But it doesn’t end there, microbes have crafty ways in which they can share resistance genes among themselves, and this has exacerbated the problem. It’s not just a case of each species of bacteria having to develop its own resistance mechanism each time they come into contact with an antibiotic. Instead, different species of bacteria can share the genes with each other.
The fact that antibiotics have been is use for over 80 years, and it is only now that the WHO have produced their first global report on the state of antibiotic resistance, shows just how much we underestimated the impact antibiotic resistance would have. The report highlights what microbiologists have been shouting for a while now, that a world without antibiotics is a scary place, and we are likely to be living in that world in as little as ten years.
This report was under embargo so I couldn’t link to it until now. You can now read it here:
www.who.int/drugresistance/documents/surveillancereport/en/ They have also made a handy infographic: infographic-antimicrobial-resistance-20140430
Will anyone listen to Jim Humble before it is too late?
